Importing assets

HOWTO75589

Last Updated May 08, 2012

Importing assets

In the asset system, asset import involves the import of the following data:

Data for the asset-specific fields
Asset-specific fields are the fields that are specific to the asset type that you select to import.
See Predefined asset types.
Data for the common fields
Common fields are the fields that are common across all the asset types.
See Common fields for all asset types.

To import assets, you must select either a default data collector, CSV data collector, or an ODBC data collector.

Table: How data collectors work in asset import

Selected data collector

How the data collector works

Default

Asset import from default data collector involves the import from the data collection components as well as the CSV data collector.

The default data collector gathers the information about the asset-specific fields from the data collection components in the Control Compliance Suite.

Note:

The default data collector is not applicable for fresh installation of CCS.

A data collection component is assigned to the import query internally, depending on the platform for which the asset import should be performed. A separate data collector is assigned to each platform for data collection.

The data collection components are, Windows data collector, UNIX data collector, SQL data collector, Oracle data collector, ESM data collector, Exchange data collector, NDS data collector, and NetWare data collector.

Note:

For custom platforms, if you select CSV or ODBC data collector during entity schema creation, then the selected data collector becomes the default data collector.

The default data collector gathers information about the common fields from the CSV.
The data for the common fields is imported from the Common platform. You must configure the Common platform with a CSV share to import the data for the common fields of the assets.
See Configuring Common platform through CSV settings.

CSV

The CSV data collector gathers the information about the asset-specific fields from a CSV file.
The CSV data collector reads from the CSV files that are specific to platforms. You must create different CSV files for different platforms, if you want to import the asset-specific fields data from the CSV file.
To know more about configuring the CSV data collector, click on the following link:
See Configuring the CSV data collector.
In addition to the CSV file specific to the platform, you also need the CSV file that is configured for the Common platform to import the information about the common fields.
See Configuring Common platform through CSV settings.

ODBC

The ODBC data collector gathers information about the asset-specific fields that are defined in the table columns of the ODBC databases. The ODBC data collector collects both asset-specific and common fields data that are defined for the asset in the database tables.

To know more about configuring the ODBC data collector , click on the following link:

See Configuring the ODBC data collector.

The ODBC data collector reads data from the configured tables of the ODBC compliant databases. The database tables are configured for different platforms as per the entity schema. You must define the table names and the table column names appropriately as per the entity schema for successful data collection.

Directory Server (LDAP)

The Directory Server (LDAP) data collector gathers the information about the asset-specific fields from directory server.

Note:

Windows Machine asset import scoped to Windows Domain asset type is not supported by CCS for fresh installation. You may use CSV, ODBC, or LDAP data collector for asset import. In upgrade installation, you can use RMS data collector for Windows Machine asset import scoped to Windows Domain asset type.

See Importing the assets for the first time

See Managing routing rules.

See About managing the credentials.

See Importing asset-specific fields from the default data collector

See Importing asset-specific and common fields using the default data collector

See Importing asset-specific and common fields using the CSV data collector

See Importing the specific and common fields for custom asset using the CSV data collector